July 29, 2002

I can’t sleep; and now that I’ve started today’s New York Times, it might have been a message. In the words of Charlie Brown, “Augh!!.” Declan also has a big piece on this on CNet which paints a dire picture. Basically, it looks like Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) may be plotting an end-run around the opponents of the CBDTPA (See S.2395 and amendments at Thomas.)

Although it does get curiouser and curiouser as the day progresses. At 2:00PM I added the LawMeme link below. Now, after working through Donna Wentworth’s bit (via e-mail) I came across this interesting article posted at The Register in April.

(5 items listed below)

Amy Harmon has a depressing article in today’s Times, not only suggesting that Congress is starting to buy the line of the linkes of Hollings and Berman, but also that Biden’s draft bill that started as a bill updating penalties for counterfeiting via hologram copying is being modified to give the movie industries what they want via a set of backdoor modification. More people to write letters to.TODAY if Declan’s piece is right. (The ZDNet version with Talkbacks) Update: A Slashdot discussion has started up.

Here’s a report from Biden’s office on intellectual property. It not only starts with the usual conflation of the notion of intellectual property and property, but it also seems to swallow, hook-line-and-sinker, the preposterous "losses" due to piracy flung around by the BSA, MPAA and RIAA.

Update: The folks over at LawMeme have a less contentious interpretation of the amended Biden stuff - although they’re also soliciting sharper interpretations from their audience..

The infamous Hiawatha Bray does his usual strange thing in today’s column in the Boston Globe. While ultimately producing an ambivalent conclusion about a controversial subject, he still manages to inject enough inflammatory language to upset just about everyone with a real opinion about Berman-Coble.